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Example person
Asked: 2020-12-30 20:26:35 +0800 CST

How can I stop Apt from marking packages as manual when you run the "apt install <package which is already there>" command?

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How can I stop Apt from marking packages as manual when you run the "apt install " command?

For example, Accidentally, when I run apt install <package-which-is-already-there> (of a package which is already there), it marks the package as manually installed.

Which I hate a lot. How can I stop apt from doing this? It even messes up things sometimes.

apt

2 Answers

  1. You cannot stop apt from marking a package that you specified as manual. You specified it -- that's the definition of 'manual'.

    However, when you do that, it's trivial to change apt-marking back from manual to auto:

    sudo apt-mark auto <package-name-1> <package-name-2> ... <package-name-n>
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  2. Best Answer

    Aside from the remedy provided by @user535733, you can always check before installing what the apt will do by simulating the install using the -s flag:

    apt install -s <package-which-is-already-there>

    If the package is already installed you will get a line like this:

    <package-which-is-already-there> is already the newest version (<version>).

    From the man page man apt-get:

    -s, --simulate, --just-print, --dry-run, --recon, --no-act
   No action; perform a simulation of events that would occur based on the
   current system state but do not actually change the system. Locking will be
   disabled (Debug::NoLocking) so the system state could change while apt-get
   is running. Simulations can also be executed by non-root users which might
   not have read access to all apt configuration distorting the simulation. A
   notice expressing this warning is also shown by default for non-root users
   (APT::Get::Show-User-Simulation-Note). Configuration Item:
   APT::Get::Simulate.

   Simulated runs print out a series of lines, each representing a dpkg
   operation: configure (Conf), remove (Remv) or unpack (Inst). Square brackets
   indicate broken packages, and empty square brackets indicate breaks that are
   of no consequence (rare).
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